Paris woman’s return to Malta focuses on the Island Country’s history

By Karon Sinning

And we are off again!

Heading back to Malta, I decided to change up my flights. This with the hope of making flight connections and not ending up in Poland (nothing wrong with Warsaw, just didn’t plan on going there) I discovered Icelandair. Icelandair allows (and encourages) no fee stopovers on their flights to Europe. These can be from one to thirteen days. The travel time from Toronto to Reykjavik is 5 ½ hours, which to me sounded better than 9 hours to Rome. But with all good things, there is a caveat…you depart Toronto at 9 pm, arriving 6 am their time, 2 am our time!

Karon and Marie, of Paris, standing where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates meet in Iceland.

Doing some research and chatting with people about Iceland only increased my desire to see it for myself. One warning though, it is very expensive. Abowl of soup and a tea on my credit card revealed itself at $28 dollars. A dinner of fish and chips for two…$100.

We had pre-booked our transportation from the airport into Reykjavik on the Flybus. This was easy to do online and departs Keflavik Airport every 20 minutes or so While Keflavik is a smaller airport in comparison with other international airports, for two tired old ladies lugging our suitcases, it was a bit of a challenge. Undaunted, we asked for directions and found the bus!

The scenery on the 45-minute drive into Reykjavik was very bleak; much like February and early March at home As we got nearer to the city, mountains became visible. The temperature while we were there hovered between 58C

My friend Marie had gotten a recommendation for accommodation. So, thinking that was a safer bet than a random selection, we chose Room with a View, in Reykjavik.

This is an apartment type spot, similar to an Airbnb. We were given to believe the Flybus would leave us a short, five-minute walk to the Room, up a short hill Well, pushing our luggage up that hill on uneven pavement was more than a challenge! There are no directions in English and there is more than one side street on the way up the hill.

After turning on what I thought was the right street, we were lost. Showing a couple of city workers our accommodation booking address, I asked if they knew where we were going.

Thank goodness I had a printed copy and I was able to show them the address rather than trying to pronounce it. They were very pleasant and spoke very good English.

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